Those two never expressed self-doubt. I knew the expression, I knew them fifty-nine years. When they told you it was there or would be there it was right where they said it would be. Sometimes they told me to my face it would be where I didn’t always know I needed itto be. You’re worthless without dependability.

Those two, they’d always eat that cheap cake. It was junk to me.Those two were protective to the point they’d blame the floor for wearing out your shoes.And if you didn’t eat the cake––they gave you a look like you were lost, then another lookto forgive what they expressed.

I didn’t know for eighteen years the desertion that made them wild.Shame to the point of resentment, plain and predominant.I’d come in and the cake would be on the table. Sometimes we had it out.The root of the arguing happened underneath whatever was going on.It was a frustrated account going back to a past about one of them deserting the other. When he returned cake became their habit. It had to have been agreed to withsome forgiveness to the expression of a plea with some begrudgement.

It would be one of those two cutting me a piece of cake. Me resisting.I don’t know what comes first, the lust for sugar or the bitter person.

Originally from Los Angeles, Doren Robbins is a poet and mixed media artist from Santa Cruz, California. His work has appeared in many publications, including TheAmerican Poetry Review, Cimarron Review, 5 AM, Hotel Amerika, The Indiana Review, Nimrod, Sulphur, and The Iowa Review. Past collections of his poetry, Driving Face Down and My Piece of the Puzzle were awarded the Blue Lynx Poetry Award 2001 and the 2008 PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Poetry Award, respectively. His recent book Twin Extra: A Poem In Three Parts (Wild Ocean Press 2015) was nominated for the National Jewish Book Council Award in Poetry. After twenty-something years traveling, living in Colorado and Oregon, raising a family, and working as a cook and as a carpenter, he started teaching a variety of creative writing, literature, and composition classes through an extended personal interpretation of Kenneth Burke’s idea of “literature as equipment for living.” Since 1991 he has taught literature, composition, and creative writing at several colleges, including Foothill College 2001-current.

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